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The Origin of Murphy's Law
"If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it."
So who was Murphy anyway?
Born in 1917, Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the United States Air Force in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981).
One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount. Of course, somebody managed to install all 16 the wrong way around.
Murphy then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days later.
Within months, "Murphy's Law" had spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering, and finally reached the Webster's dictionary in 1958.
Tragically (and perhaps typically), the popular cliche we call "Murphy's Law" was never uttered by Edward Murphy.
Murphy's Law applies to Murphy's Law, too
The traditional version of Murphy's Law ("anything that can go wrong, will") is actually "Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives." Finagle's Law was popularized by science fiction author Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this "Belter" culture professed a religion and/or running joke involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy.
Since then, the relentless truth inherent in Murphy's Law has become a persistent thorn in the side of humanity.